Sunday the boys and I drove to western Pennsylvania to meet my my dad and my brother and his boys. We are staying at Paddler’s Lane Retreat near Confluence, PA.
The drive was as uneventful as can be hoped with a 7 and 9 year old in the car. We hit no real traffic (okay, a little on the way through NYC, but that is expected). We arrived late in the afternoon, beating everyone else here by several hours (it is a little longer drive from St. Louis than from Connecticut).
Yesterday was left unstructured so the cousins could all just unwind from the drive an play together. In the afternoon we walked down to the river and spent a couple of hours playing in the river.
There are train tracks right across the driveway from the house (maybe 70m from the house) – and it is a busy track with lots of coal trains (and a periodic Amtrak passenger train). The trains have been a huge hit with the boys. Every 30 minutes to 60 minutes a train runs by, and the boys all run outside to watch it. At least they did yesterday, Will is getting a little bored with it today. Yesterday morning on of the trains stopped alongside the property. The boys walked over to look at the train, and the engineer came out of the train and talked to them (and gave them each a bottle of water). The engineer said that he was stopped while they did track work, but couldn’t take the boys up in the engine to look around.
The river was fun in the afternoon. A group of kids learning to kayak came downstream while we were playing in the water. One of the kids flipped his/her boat on the single hole they were playing around in on the rapids near where we were playing. This would be a great place to bring life jackets for the adults and some rafts to float the rapids.
Internet has been sporadic here. And there is no cell coverage at all (unless I walk 10 minutes to the end of the driveway and down the road a bit). But it nice to take a break from always checking email and the phone. I’ve been leaving the phone inside all day.
Of course we had to find some internet… so here I am writing on the blog. Pictures will have to follow later, I didn’t bring the cable to download pictures from my camera.
No real plans today – just hang out for a bit and let the boys play. Maybe head down to the river if the weather warms up.
